Director Gus Van Sant is well-known for making movies focused on outsiders struggling for a sense of identity (Milk, Paranoid Park, My Own Private Idaho). Author Bret Easton Ellis is perhaps most famous for his novel about an outsider who also happens to be an outright sociopath (American Psycho). Now, Variety writes that the two will collaborate on the story of Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake, a couple who committed suicide two years ago.
Blake and Duncan were stars of the multimedia art world — he was a well-renowned digital artist, painter, and designer, while she was a filmmaker, video game designer, and critic — but shortly before their deaths, their behavior grew erratic. At one point, the couple became paranoid that they were under attack by Scientologists. Blake returned home on July 10, 2007 to find Duncan already deceased from ingesting a combination of medicines and alcohol. One week later, he drowned himself by walking into the Atlantic Ocean off of Rockaway Beach.
In early 2008, Nancy Jo Sales wrote an article for Vanity Fair entitled "The Golden Suicides," which chronicled the events leading up to the couple's tragic deaths. Van Sant and Ellis have obtained the rights to this article and will use it as a blueprint for their script. Van Sant is on-board as a writer, although it is unclear whether he will also direct.
If you're interested in seeing Duncan and Blake's work, check out this link (courtesy of Vanity Fair) to The History of Glamour, a short feature from 1999 written and directed by Duncan with art direction by Blake. The movie is described as "a semi-autobiographical satire about the rise of a young female indie-rock musician".